Luke was everything I ever wanted in a husband. He was handsome and intelligent, he loved the Lord, and he was my best friend. We dated for almost two years with talk of marriage as an end. And then one day, Luke was gone.

I still don’t understand what happened, but I do know that someone whom I loved deeply is no longer a part of my life. What possibly hurt the most was the fact that I had been so obedient to God. I had prayed every step of the way that this was the relationship that He wanted me in and it felt as though God let me down. I thought, “Lord, I followed in Your footsteps just like You told me to, and now I am here, but where are you?” Suddenly, the God that had been speaking to me so clearly over the last two years was silent, and I wanted to know why.

The hurt continued to hit me wave after wave without any end. I questioned God, I read my Bible, I asked strong Christian friends to pray, and yet God remained silent. There was a strange presence I could feel in this silence. I knew it was the Lord, but how could that make sense? If the Lord truly was there and standing by me, then why wouldn’t He speak to me? Was He really that cruel? Or did He want me to wait until I wasn’t so focused on my loss to talk to Him? Maybe I never heard God to begin with and this relationship was never supposed to happen. If that were true, maybe God never spoke to me at all.

These were the types of thoughts that were swirling in my head. Finally, one day, I read Isaiah 54:10:

“For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My loving kindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” Says the Lord who has compassion on you.

The verse hit me full force. It was the same verse that a friend had given to my mother to help her deal with my father’s death. Years later, as I dealt with the constant absence of my father, this verse was in turn given to me. Written in the margins by this text were these words, “This verse comes to me again. This time it’s because I am afraid I am losing Luke. I’m so fearful. Help me, Lord.” It was dated two weeks before Luke broke up with me. I had completely forgotten that I had even read these words or written this comment.

How amazing that one verse came to me over and over whenever my future seemed especially dark and my life so exceedingly cold. I realized that though my world was falling apart, the Lord never removed His loving kindness from me, and His peace was always with me. And suddenly, the silence made sense.

I have questions that may never be answered, but I’m not afraid of the silence anymore. Now I know that when God is silent, it is because greater things are going on than simply the things that I can see. The silence wasn’t a void between God and me, but rather an act of beauty, like a friend sitting in silence as you both mourn a death. There is a peace in silence, a sort of healing in the stillness, in the very act of waiting to see what God has for you next. And when the time comes, God shall speak to me again, and whatever it is He has in store for me, even if there is heartache at the end, I will go.

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